Baseball in Japan is more than just a game. The Japanese stars in MLB carry that pressure everywhere they go

By Kyle Feldscher, CNN

(CNN) — Watch the trailer for “Homecoming: The Tokyo Series,” which will begin streaming on the CNN app at 9 a.m. ET on Friday. Subscribe to All Access here.

Baseball in Japan, according to Yasuko Tanahara, starts and ends with a bow.

It’s meant as a measure of respect – to your teammates, to your opponents, to the umpires, to the fans in the crowd – but it can also be seen as a nod to what the sport means to the culture of a nation that has embraced the American pastime as something more than just a game.

She’s been coaching kids in the sport for years out of Osaka and emphasizes that what she’s teaching is not just how to field a ground ball or how to swing a bat effectively; Tanahara is teaching life.

“I teach them that they need to be polite, greet people properly,” she said of the kids she coaches for Yamadanishi Little Wolf in Osaka, Japan, in the new CNN Films documentary, “Homecoming: The Tokyo Series.”

“I tell them that they need to grow up in a way that doesn’t bring shame to those people that raised them. It should never be about self-centered desires or egos.”

In Japan, baseball is a life lesson. And the professionals who have gone to North America to chase success in Major League Baseball carry the weight of being living, breathing examples of that life lesson to a nation of more than 120 million people.

In the documentary, which begins streaming Friday on the CNN app, the pressure on the stars who played in last year’s season-opening series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs is laid bare. Five Japanese players – Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki of the Dodgers and Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki of the Cubs – played in the series, etching new legacies for Japanese stars that are clear across Japan’s baseball world.

“When we were little, Major League Baseball was a world that was so amazing to us. In this island that is Japan, if we crossed the sea there was this stage that felt like a dream, with absolute superstars,” said Toru Tanahara, Yasuko’s son and fellow coach on Little Wolf.

“They were playing baseball on a level that Japanese people couldn’t even comprehend. From then on, more and more Japanese players went to the MLB. It makes me so happy seeing them make it.”

Baseball as life

Jason Coskrey is an American sportswriter who began working in Japan in 2007 covering baseball, giving him a unique insight into what the sport means to both nations.

As the game has grown internationally, each nation has put its own spin on the sport – as clearly seen during this month’s World Baseball Classic, which sparked discussion about the flair of Latin American teams and the seriousness of the American team.

Coskrey says Japan’s attitude toward the game is also a clear reflection of Japanese culture.

“There is a misconception that Japan is this completely rigid society, and it’s not entirely true because all of the players – they have fun,” he said in the documentary. “They do things outside of the box, so it’s not entirely true. But there is a reflection of that corporate mentality of 9-to-5, this is what we have to do, we’re gonna do it this way, reflected in the game.”

That starts at a young age, as Yasuko Tanahara shows.

Her son, Toru, concurs, saying, “Eventually, they’ll have their own family and their own kids and then raise those kids. It’s that cycle, over and over again. So for that, baseball as a sport to prepare them for all of that – we help them grow their heart, essentially. That’s the whole point of this team.”

Going to America and representing Japan

The 2025 season marked the sixth time MLB held its opening series in Japan, but this one was unlike any other.

The five stars on the Dodgers and Cubs are among some of the most accomplished players in the game. Ohtani is a two-way star who is a unicorn in the game today as both one of the best hitters and one of the best pitchers in the sport. Yamamoto would go on to essentially win the Dodgers the World Series at the end of the season. Sasaki and Imanaga are some of the game’s most exciting up-and-coming pitchers. Suzuki is one of Chicago’s most powerful hitters.

Each of them feels a responsibility to their teammates and their fans in LA and Chicago to perform each day. But more than that is the weight that comes from the millions of people watching back home.

Being in the iconic Tokyo Dome for the first games of the 2025 season only ramped up that pressure, as was evident in a pregame press conference shown in the documentary.

“I feel the excitement of Japan,” Imanaga says. “But I also have a sense of responsibility and pressure.”

Suzuki added, “I think we are here today because of what our seniors have done for us, so we want to do our best here again and dream that many more Japanese athletes will be able to play in the US. I hope that this will not be a golden age for us and that we will have a brighter future ahead of us.”

Other Japanese stars have come before them and shown them the path – Hideo Nomo, Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui and others – but their goal is to inspire the next generation as those superstars inspired them.

The documentary shows that it doesn’t just mean hitting home runs or tossing strikeouts. It’s also about how these players carry themselves and how they are presented in the public eye. Performing on the field is important but behaving in a way that honors your family, your compatriots, your culture – that is paramount.

Meghan Montemurro, the Cubs beat writer for the Chicago Tribune, laid out the stakes clearly: “You’re going to have more kids trying to emulate these Japanese players.”

The players are aware of the microscope that they are under. When asked how he was feeling ahead of the games in Tokyo, Yamamoto didn’t talk about nerves for the season starting or his desire to shut down the Cubs’ lineup.

Instead, he was looking to the future.

“I would be very happy if I could make as much of a positive impact as possible,” he said.

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